(2012) Cross-Border Murder (27 page)
Then I went downstairs and joined Gina before the news came on. Mary had already gone to bed. Gina had been watching an American channel. And so when the news came on it was the local news put out by the Burlington station. It was the lead item.
“Tragedy struck just outside Essex Junction earlier today.” The young blonde anchorwoman with an unusually high-pitched voice intoned. The visual image was unmistakable. It gave a full frontal view of Hendricks’ Pan-A-Bode cottage. The camera captured a covered body being carried out on a stretcher towards an ambulance. It was still not dark but all the lights on the ambulance were flashing. Any doubt I might have had about the identity of the body on the stretcher disappeared as the anchorwoman continued. “The dead body of Professor Harold Hendricks was discovered around six o’clock this evening by a neighbor who had heard a gun blast. Authorities for the moment are assuming it was a suicide.” The scene shifted to a burly sheriff in conversation with a reporter who seemed to be even younger than Gina. In a neutral voice the sheriff said, “he appears to have been alone, the front door was locked, we had to break in, and a suicide note was found on a table near the body. But we’re still investigating.” The image shifted to the reporter. “Police are attempting to identify two men and two women who were seen leaving the cottage earlier in the day. The victim was a Canadian engineering professor who taught at Winston University in Montreal. A short interview with a neighbor who was still dressed in the uniform of a customs officer followed. He was careful in what he said, refusing to acknowledge that he knew or had seen anything unusual recently in the behavior of his friend and neighbor. There was a flicker of a pause and then the anchorwoman went quickly on to another item. I pressed the mute button.
My forehead felt clammy. I knew the blood had drained from my face. I tried to take a deep breath. I turned towards Gina. Her face stared horrified at the muted, meaningless images still flickering on the screen.
“Holy Christ!” I muttered.
Gina gulped for air and fled to the kitchen. I heard her vomiting. I followed her into the kitchen.
“I need some towels,” she said in a hoarse whisper. She turned on the cold water tap and splashed water on her face.
“I’ll get some.” I felt like a psychological zombie. I rushed to the linen closet and came back loaded with face cloths and three large fluffy towels.
“Why?” She asked finally, her voice muffled by a thick towel. “Why would he do that?”
I just shook my head in bewilderment. All I could think of was his look of disappointment just before he closed his door and locked it, possibly for the last time, behind him. I had to fight the bile in my throat.
The phone rang with a grating ring. I hesitated then answered it after the second ring.
“Mr. Thomas Webster?”
“Yes.” It was a strong voice, one that I had just heard on the news. I held the receiver away from my ear so that Gina could also hear him. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Mary had just come down the stairs and was moving towards Gina.
“Sheriff Wayman of Essex County. Are you acquainted with a Harold Hendricks?”
“Yes.” Before he could say anything else, I said, “I’ve just seen the newscast.”
“Yes, well, that should save us both some time. Were you, by any chance, part of the group that visited Mr. Hendricks late this morning?”
“Yes I was.”
“Ah, good! Any possibility that you could come down here tomorrow? There are reasons why we need to talk to you. Mr. Hendricks left an envelope for you.”
I wondered for a moment whether I had heard right. An envelope? I decided to keep my confusion to myself. “Around what time tomorrow?”
“How about noon?”
“Okay.” I said in a dazed voice.
He gave me the address of his office. Then the line went dead. I looked around. Mary had her arms around Gina. “I’ll come with you,” she said. I nodded gratefully.
Mary and I parked outside the Sheriff’s office in Essex County. We were five minutes early. We took the time to try to compose ourselves. Since we had first become aware of Hendricks’ suicide, none of us had dared broach an obvious question: was his suicide an admission of guilt?
Would his note to me contain something which would allow us to close down our investigation? Or would it only further compound our problems? Earlier that morning I had spoken to Ryan. He was anything but his usual ebullient self. I also put a courtesy call through to Joe Gibbs. I succeeded only in reaching his answering service where I left a short message about the suicide of Professor Hendricks. After a moment’s hesitation I also called Mel Vogel at his home. I briefed him on the latest developments. When he asked me to file a story, I told him that I was an implicated party, particularly since I had visited Hendricks at his cottage just prior to his death. In fact, I told him, I may have been the last person to see him alive. I asked Mel to assign someone else and if possible to keep my name out of the story for as long as possible. I explained to him that becoming myself the focus of media attention would only impede my work on what was a much bigger story. He did not argue with me, but I knew I was dealing with a disgruntled managing editor.
“I think it’s time to go in,” Mary said. I nodded. We got out of the car and headed across the street to the modern two-story building that now housed the local court, the Essex police department and what I presumed were three or four detention cells.
A young officer led us down a corridor to Sheriff Wayman’s corner office. From the photos on the wall behind his desk, I suspected he had just completed a tour of duty as an officer in the Marine Corps. He rose from his desk to greet us. His eyes showed a particular interest as I introduced Mary. He waved us to two chairs.
He gestured to a tape recorder on the corner of his desk. “Would you mind?” He asked. I glanced at Mary. She seemed prepared to leave the decision to me. “No, I don’t mind.” I said.
He nodded. “It’ll help us with the written statement I will need from both of you later. He settled himself comfortably in his padded leather desk chair and smiled. “First I’d like to hear from you the nature and reason for your visit yesterday to Professor Hendricks.”
How to explain? And even more crucial, how much should I tell him? As a journalist I knew there comes a point when it is a mistake to hold too much back. I decided that if he did not know of it already, he would inevitably be told about the retrieval of the rifle barrel from behind Hendricks’ cottage. The smart course, I decided quickly was to tell him as much as he was willing to hear. “It’s a long story,” I admitted wearily, and watched his reaction for some indication of how much he really wanted. I was hoping he would ask me to keep it short and to the point. But he didn’t. He only nodded.
“I’ve been trained to be a good listener.” He said with a smile.
And he was. I began at the beginning, with my coverage as a reporter of Monaghan’s murder. For close to an hour, I gave him a succinct progress report on our attempts to unravel the confusion surrounding that murder fifteen years ago and more recently of Monaghan’s wife. Occasionally, he arched an eyebrow, but he interrupted me only once and when I least expected it. It was when I mentioned our assumption that Hendricks had once been in love with Monaghan’s wife.
“And not with Mrs. Montini?” He asked, surprised, glancing at Mary.
“Good heavens, no!” Mary said. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I’ll come to that later,” he said apologetically. He turned his attention back to me, and nodded for me to continue. I picked up where I had left off. He gave no indication of surprise when I explained about hiring the private investigators to watch Hendricks and about their retrieval of the barrel. I assumed he already knew. When I finally finished I asked him how Hendricks had died.
“It was not pretty,” He said simply. He turned off the tape recorder. He glanced at Mary momentarily before continuing. “He appears to have put the shot gun in his mouth and somehow managed to pull both triggers at the same time. Or at least that is what we think he did.” For a moment my mind conjured an image of Hendricks with most of his over-sized head splattered about the room. I struggled to keep my composure.
“But of course a more definite conclusion will have to await the coroner’s decision.” I glanced at Mary. Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, her knuckles white, her eyes half-closed staring down at the floor. I think she was saying some kind of prayer. I deliberately shifted my attention to the window focusing on the line-up of cars waiting patiently for a traffic light to turn green.
“The fact that you brought Mrs. Montini along with you makes my job easier.” Wayman said. “Saves me the time and energy,” he said glancing at Mary, “of trying to contact you and your daughter.”
Mary looked up, puzzled.
“We found a lengthy note on the table near the body. There was also a sealed envelope with Mr. Webster’s name on it. The address was incomplete. But it had a street name, and Montreal written on it. Enough for me to be able to reach Mr. Webster last night.” He turned to me. “It’s addressed to you as confidential and its sealed. With your permission I would like to examine its contents and hold on to the original, at least until after the coroner’s inquest. But I would give you a copy.” I didn’t object. How could I? I didn’t even know whether I had a right to, although the tone of his request seemed to imply that I might have. He continued, “the other document I mentioned appears to have been a relatively straightforward suicide note, but there was an addendum to it.” He pulled a xeroxed copy towards him. “Hendricks wrote: I now think I understand what Frank must have suffered as an unending suspect and subsequent social pariah. Mary and Gina I’m sorry for the extent to which I may have contributed to your tribulations. I hereby amend my last will and testament, which is on deposit with the Royal Bank at the corners of Cavendish and Sherbrooke, to leave my net worth equally to Mary Montini and her daughter Gina rather than to Winston University. I know that they will use the money wisely. I am, at the moment, sober and of sound mind. Despite my displeasure with the manner in which Thomas Webster has behaved recently, I nonetheless have decided to appoint him as executor of my last will and testament. I hope he will accept the nature of the burden that I wish to impose upon him.”
Mary and I shared a stunned silence. Wayman watched our reactions. Finally he said, “well, there you have it. Since the addendum changing his will was not witnessed there may well be legal complications, but unless something turns up to dispute all of this, I will be notifying the bank and forwarding the necessary documents after the inquest. Do you know whether Professor Hendricks had any immediate relatives who should be notified?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. The university might.”
He nodded. “Someone will eventually have to claim the body.”
Again I nodded. Finally I said, feeling foolish as I did so, “if there was any doubt about the manner of his death, that last paragraph would surely make us prime suspects.”
He smiled. “That did occur to me,” he said, leaving the sentence dangling momentarily in the air between us, “but only for a brief moment. As we know, there were four of you who paid him that last visit. A conspiracy of four? Very unlikely. Besides, you were all seen leaving his cottage long before his neighbor heard the blast of the shotgun.”
He consulted a pad on his desk. I had not noticed him making any notes. But then he may have made them before our arrival. He mentioned that the retrieval of the gun barrel on Hendricks’ property might, under different circumstances, have warranted a charge of illegal trespassing and petty theft. He glanced up at me. I gave him an awkward smile. He added, “And I would like all of you to know that I don’t appreciate private detectives skulking around this County without my knowledge or permission. You might convey that to your friend, the ex-cop.” He sighed. He did not seem particularly happy about ignoring such matters, but then I suspect he was a practical man. Making a fuss involving Canadians was not in his interest at the moment. He glanced at his notes again. “Just a few more things,” he said.
He asked me how to reach both Lieutenant Ricci and Captain Leclair. I gave him their numbers. I also volunteered the number of Joe Gibbs at the university. And I gave him Joe’s home phone number as well.
“Did he admit to any guilt in the suicide note?” I asked finally.
Wayman shook his head. “Only the part about the apology to Mrs. Montini and her daughter.” Meanwhile,” he added, reaching into a drawer, and handing me a manila envelope, “if you will open this, I’ll then make xerox copies of it and his will which you can take with you.” I found myself doing what he asked, although I had some misgivings. I prayed that there was nothing in the document that could pose a problem to me: other, perhaps, than to take my pride down a notch or two. He left the office and returned a few minutes later and handed me a large envelope.
It had the logo of the Essex County’s sheriff’s department emblazoned on it.
“I presume I can count on both of you to make yourselves available for the inquest?” We both nodded.
On the way back to Montreal, the envelope which I had folded remained in my breast pocket like a piece of petulance close to my heart. We crossed the border as if nothing had happened.
“What,” I asked, once we were under way again, “are we going to do about his last will and testament?”
“I guess we will have to consult a lawyer. I’m sure Winston University will consult theirs.”
“He must have had some relatives,” I observed.
“Funny but he never spoke about relatives in the years I knew him at Winston. No, I’m afraid you’re the one with the real problem now.”
“In what way?”
“Well, unless someone else steps forward to contest the document he left behind you’re stuck as his executor. And you know what that means. Someone will have to claim his body and make the necessary funeral arrangements. And someone will have to go through his house and cottage soon, if only to clean out the fridges and pantries and lock the places up until decisions are made.”